Doctors in Britain are increasingly abandoning the NHS to apply to work abroad, official figures have shown, with bureaucracy, long hours and health care rationing blamed for the exodus.

Data from the General Medical Council shows there has been a 20 per cent increase in the last five years in doctors applying for a certificate of good standing to allow them to register to practice abroad.

Recruitment specialists said they were mostly heading to Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

One said that a GP in Australia could work fewer hours and earn more than in the UK.

In 2009 there were 3,914 certificates granted, compared to 4,741 last year, according to the figures obtained by Pulse magazine.

There is expected to be a further rise this year as 2,485 certificates were granted in the first six months of 2014.

Guy Hazel, managing director of the Austmedic recruitment agency, told Pulse: "Most GP trainees who apply this August will be practicing in Australia by February next year. Most of them graduate and then spend three or four month locuming before moving over. But it’s not just newly-qualified GPs – I’m helping a 40-year-old GP partner from Northern Ireland to move over this week. I see a lot of partners looking to move because they’re attracted to the lifestyle.

"GPs might work a 65 hour week in the UK. In Australia, they’ll work 40 and probably earn more. Once they’ve settled and got to grips with the Australian system, which takes about three months, a UK-trained GP could easily be earning $260,000-300,000 (£143,000-165,000)."

Paul Brooks, the managing director of the EU Health Staff agency told Pulse that many of the 100 or so UK doctors he has helped emigrate in the last year have sought to escape the ‘overwhelming bureaucracy, paperwork and rationing of healthcare’ they associate with the NHS.

The Royal College of General Practitioners has warned that millions of patients in England cannot get appointments with their family doctor because of a lack of GPs and increasing demand.

A poll conducted by an Oxfordshire GP and published in GPOnline magazine found one in ten family doctors were considering emigrating and half did not know if their British surgery would still exist in five years.

The exodus of doctors, particularly newly qualified GPs will make it even harder for patients to see a family doctor, it was warned.

The British Medical Association said that the numbers leaving to work abroad may be even higher as the figures do not include overseas doctors who have come to Britain to work and then go home again.

Dr Krishna Kasaraneni, chairman of the British Medical Association's GP training committee, told Pulse: "It’s not that one particular age group, gender or location are feeling hard-done by – it’s the fact that general practice is getting more and more stressful. It’s about self-preservation. I don’t blame any of my colleagues for wanting to leave. The workload in general practice is getting more and more every day without the resources to try and cope with it.

"UK GPs are a great resource for any health system, but if we don’t respect them, we will lose them. It’s already happening."